November 1Awakening“God helps us as we help each other.”Basic Text, p. 51––––=––––Our addiction caused us to think almost exclusively of ourselves. Even our prayers—if we prayed at all—were self-centered. We asked God to fix things for us or get us out of trouble. Why? Because we didn’t want to live with the problems we’d created for ourselves. We were insecure. We thought life was about getting, and we always wanted more.And in recovery we get more—more than just not using. The spiritual awakening we experience in working the Twelve Steps reveals to us a life we never dreamed possible. We no longer need to worry about whether there will be “enough,” for we come to rely on a loving Higher Power who meets all our daily needs. Relieved of our incessant insecurity, we no longer see the world as a place in which to compete with others for the fulfillment of our desires. Instead, we see the world as a place in which to live out the love our Higher Power has shown us. Our prayers are not for instant gratification; they are for help in helping each other.Recovery awakens us from the nightmare of self-centeredness, strife, and insecurity that lies at the core of our disease. We wake up to a new reality: All that is worth having can be kept only by giving it away.––––=––––Just for today: My God helps me as I help others. Today, I will seek help in giving away the love my Higher Power has given me, knowing that is the way to keep it.

If you cannot read this message, then please go to http://www.jftna.org/jftSeptember 26Seeing ourselves in others“It will not make us better people to judge the faults of another.”Basic Text, p. 38––––=––––How easy it is to point out the faults of others! There’s a reason for this: The defects we identify most easily in others are often the defects we are most familiar with in our own characters. We may notice our best friend’s tendency to spend too much money, but if we examine our own spending habits we’ll probably find the same compulsiveness. We may decide our sponsor is much too involved in service, but find that we haven’t spent a single weekend with our families in the past three months because of one service commitment or another.What we dislike in our fellows are often those things we dislike most in ourselves. We can turn this observation to our spiritual advantage. When we are stricken with the impulse to judge someone else, we can redirect the impulse in such a way as to recognize our own defects more clearly. What we see will guide our actions toward recovery and help us become emotionally healthy and happy individuals.––––=––––Just for today: I will look beyond the character defects of others and recognize my own.

“My life is well-rounded and I am becoming a more comfortable version of myself, not the neurotic, boring person that I thought I’d be without drugs.”

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Is there really life without drugs? Newcomers are sure that they are destined to lead a humdrum existence once they quit using. That fear is far from reality.

Narcotics Anonymous opens the door to a new way of life for our members. The only thing we lose in NA is our slavery to drugs. We gain a host of new friends, time to pursue hobbies, the ability to be stably employed, even the capacity to pursue an education if we so desire. We are able to start projects and see them through to completion. We can go to a dance and feel comfortable, even if we have two left feet. We start to budget money to travel, even if it’s only with a tent to a nearby campsite. In recovery, we find out what interests us and pursue new pastimes. We dare to dream.

Life is certainly different when we have the rooms of Narcotics Anonymous to return to. Through the love we find in NA, we begin to believe in ourselves. Equipped with this belief, we venture forth into the world to discover new horizons. Many times, the world is a better place because an NA member has been there.

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Just for today: I can live a well-rounded, comfortable life—a life I never dreamed existed. Recovery has opened new horizons to me and equipped me to explore them.

Being stuck way up north I read literature do service in my area,region,and homegroup.New friends new ways of life.Left old friend out there same old story they have .Like helping newcomers , I was one once,have to give back what was freely given to me .

“We learn to become flexible... As new things are revealed, we feel renewed.”

Basic Text, p. 102

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“Flexibility” was not a part of the vocabulary we used in our using days. We’d become obsessed with the raw pleasure of our drugs and hardened to all the softer, subtler, more infinitely varied pleasures of the world around us. Our disease had turned life itself into a constant threat of jails, institutions, and death, a threat against which we hardened ourselves all the more. In the end we became brittle. With the merest breath of life’s wind we crumbled at last, broken, defeated, with no choice but to surrender.

But the beautiful irony of recovery is that, in our surrender, we found the flexibility we had lost in our addiction, the very lack of which had defeated us. We regained the ability to bend in life’s breeze without breaking. When the wind blew, we felt its loving caress against our skin, where once we would have hardened ourselves as if against the onrush of a storm.

The winds of life blow new airs our way each moment, and with them new fragrances, new pleasures, varied, subtly different. As we bend with life’s wind, we feel and hear and touch and smell and taste all it has to offer us. And as new winds blow, we feel renewed.

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Just for today: Higher Power, help me bend with life’s wind and glory in its passing. Free me from rigidity.

Being stuck way up north I read literature do service in my area,region,and homegroup.New friends new ways of life.Left old friend out there same old story they have .Like helping newcomers , I was one once,have to give back what was freely given to me .